2 Nov
2017
2 Nov
'17
7:42 p.m.
my son, corey, and rtm, were two 'kids' that haunted the
unix room (high school age). later (college age) i was
in australia teaching when the worm got out. during
a phone call to corey, i told him about the chaos.
with no more clue than that, he said "if i didnt know
better, i would think that it was rtm." it wasnt until
considerably later that the morris' name came up.
On Thu, Nov 2, 2017 at 8:25 AM, Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Nov 2, 2017 at 10:42 AM, Will Senn
<will.senn(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I seem to recall that this story was included as
part of The Cuckoo's Egg,
by Clifford Stoll. I don't recall the specifics and I wonder if it has a bit
of myth included, but somehow it was peripherally related to the
investigations. Fuzzy recollection is that the worm got out during the
investigation Clifford was involved in and it was Morris's son (Morris being
in on the investigation somehow), and the kid getting off because of the
position of the dad and the newness of the crime... or somesuch - don't
shoot the messenger, but nobody mentioned Stoll, so I thought I'd chime in,
in the hopes it might jog someone else's memory :).
Stoll mentions the worm in an epilogue to The Cuckoo's Egg; it happens
after the main events of the book. Apparently, for a brief time, some
folks thought that he might be the one behind the worm and someone
called him up and asked him if he'd written it.
Cliff Stoll talked to a number of people in law enforcement and in
government and thus made a number of contacts while he was pursuing
Markus Hess (the pursuit of Hess being the main story of The Cuckoo's
Egg): Robert Morris Sr was among those contacts. When the worm hit, he
talked to Morris Sr and asked him if he knew who started it. The
response was something along the lines of, "Yes, but I can't tell
you."
- Dan C.